Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

recognises that: — not enough homes are being built, too many vacant and derelict homes remain unused, and the overreliance on the private sector has worsened the housing crisis;

— Housing for All: A New Housing Plan for Ireland has failed as it's targets are too low or non-existent, and the Government is not meeting it's own delivery targets on social and affordable housing;

and

— a generation of young people are locked out of home ownership or secure and affordable tenancies, with 92 per cent of 18-24 year olds concerned that they will never be able to afford a home, while half are considering emigration, according to the recent State of the Nation survey by Virgin Media; notes that: — unpublished research by the Housing Commission, provided to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage in November, suggests that the baseline housing requirement each year until 2050 ranges from 42,000 to 62,000 homes;

— the Government has still not published the number of social housing units directly built last year, but has admitted it won't meet its own target;

— despite not opposing Labour's Residential Tenancies (Tenants' Rights) Bill in September 2021, the Government has still not removed sale of a property, nor restricted the other reasons landlords can use as grounds for eviction;

— the number of people entering homelessness continues to rise, reaching a record of 11,632 people in December, of whom 3,442 were children;

— Threshold reported that over 50 per cent of tenancy Notices of Termination outside of property sales were found to be invalid by their advisors in Q4 2022, while only 38 per cent of tenants felt secure in their home;

— the Government did introduce a €500 Rent Tax Credit, but many renters cannot claim this if their tenancy is not registered with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), and asking their landlord to do so may endanger their tenancy;

— the Central Statistics Office's most recent Vacant Dwelling Indicators, based on metered electricity consumption, shows a vacancy rate for dwellings of 4.3 per cent in Q4 2021, with a notable increase in apartment vacancy rates, and seven in ten vacant dwellings showing low electricity consumption for over two years, while the Census recorded 166,752 vacant dwellings in 2022; and

— the Vacant Homes Action Plan 2023-2026, published last week, includes no national targets for the number of empty and derelict homes to be brought back into use in 2023, nor does it contain Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) targets for vacant and derelict homes for each local authority; and calls on the Government to implement the following emergency housing measures: — extend the eviction ban until the end of 2023, and mandate the RTB to inform local authorities when a notice for eviction has been served to a tenant;

— introduce monthly reporting from each local authority on the tenant-in-situ scheme, with adequate reasons as to why the purchase of a rental property wasn't proceeded with;

— begin an emergency public house building programme using the full resources of the State, with monthly reporting on the number of housing commencements by local authorities, Approved Housing Bodies and the Land Development Agency (LDA);

— commence the rapid compulsory purchase of vacant properties by local authorities, with targets for each, and mandate the LDA to CPO and assemble small sites for owner occupier co-operative housing developments;

— introduce a mechanism to allow tenants access to the Rent Tax Credit when their landlord has not registered with the RTB, and increase resources for the RTB;

— increase the national housing targets to a minimum of 50,000 a year, and double the delivery of social and affordable housing;

— adopt and pass into law the Residential Tenancies (Tenants' Rights) Bill 2021, and Acquisition of Development Land (Assessment of Compensation) Bill 2021; and

— endorse and rapidly progress Labour's Housing (Homeless Families) Bill 2017, which requires local authorities to recognise and prioritise the needs of children in accordance with their best interests and constitutional rights.

I hope to share time with my colleague, Deputy Nash. I thank the Minister of State for taking the motion, which notes that not enough homes are being built; that there are too many unused, vacant and derelict homes; and that over-reliance on the private sector to address the housing crisis has only worsened that crisis. Our motion also notes that Housing for All has failed as its targets are too low or non-existent and the Government is not meeting its targets specifically on social and affordable housing. Our motion further sets the context by recognising that a generation of young people are locked out of home ownership or secure and affordable tenancies. We have seen figures indicating that 92% of those aged 18 to 24 are concerned they will never be able to afford a home and half are considering emigration. It is in that context that we move our motion calling on the Government to introduce a series of emergency housing measures to address this crisis.

We are moving this motion during a month when we are marking three years since the number of people in State emergency accommodation first reached what was seen as the critical figure of 10,000. Three years ago this month was the first time since the foundation of the State that figure was reached. That is a rather depressing anniversary, but we debate the motion against an even starker backdrop of figures. There was another record in December of 11,632 people recorded as homeless, which is well above the 10,000 mark that was in itself seen as appalling three years ago. Of those 11,632 people, 3,442 are children. That is in 2023 in what is a prosperous country, with effectively full employment, that has run budget surpluses, as we know.

Of course, we also know that this figure, staggering as it is, does not capture those who are sleeping rough, those forced to couch surf, and all those in housing insecurity. I will speak shortly about the many individuals who contacted me through my constituency office who are in that sort of housing insecurity, without any assurance or expectation that they will be able to stay in their homes into the future. That is a very serious and dire situation for people to be in, especially those with children. Hidden among the figures are the 40% of employees under the age of 35 who are not listed as homeless anywhere and are not couch surfing but continue to live with their parents in a state of suspended childhood and dependency. This is a generation locked out of home ownership and secure and affordable tenancies. All of us have met those young, and some not-so-young, people and their parents. All of us are conscious that for them, their parents, and even parents who themselves are in secure homes, that this is an untenable situation.

This is the big social issue of our times. It has huge knock-on consequences because our social protection and pension system for those in older age has always been predicated on a presumption that by retirement and pensionable age people will have reached a mortgage-free home ownership situation. Our entire social protection system is based on that premise, yet that is no longer the case for far too many people. A constituent of mine recently calculated that after 26 years of renting in Dublin, with no prospect of home ownership, they have paid more than €341,000 in rent, which is a staggering figure. That is money which is not going towards saving for retirement or paying for a home of their own.I am also hearing from pensioners in my constituency who are still renting well beyond the point where they thought they would be able to afford to buy, who are now unable to make their rent payments and are in that sort of housing insecurity I described. People in their 70s who have paid taxes and contributed for decades are contacting my office because they are facing eviction and cannot find anywhere else to live. This is unconscionable.

I will speak about children in particular. As I said, we have seen that 3,442 of those currently accessing emergency accommodation are children. No child should be in that situation of housing insecurity. No child should be faced with having to sleep rough or sleep on the streets. No child should be sent to a Garda station in the middle of the night for want of a place to go. No child should spend months on end with only a hotel room, shared with the rest of his or her family, to call home. Yet, I am hearing, as we all are, about children who are in those circumstances. I hear from so many people who are working with children in that situation, not just parents but teachers and those who are trying to pick up the pieces for those children.

We passed a referendum to enshrine children's rights into the Constitution five years ago but it has to mean something to those most vulnerable children. In 2017, the Oireachtas voted in support of the Labour Party’s Housing (Homeless Families) Bill, which would create a statutory obligation to keep families out of homelessness. It progressed to the next Stage with support from Fianna Fáil but has been left to languish since then. We included some of that Bill's provisions within some of the constructive proposals we included in the motion.

I will speak about the rental crisis and market failure. In anticipation of this debate, I looked at properties in my constituency, Dublin Bay South, on daft.ie. The most affordable two-person home I could find in that area costs €1,300 per month. That is the most affordable. It is a one-bedroom studio - just about a two-person home - with no oven and no sofa, just a bed. One notice for a single-bedroom flat for rent went up on daft.iethis morning; it has already had more than 9,000 views. I am hearing, as we all are, from people who have looked at hundreds of homes and sought to rent hundreds of places and cannot do so. I spoke previously about a constituent who was invited to bid for rent. The landlord did not set the rent but invited offers like an auction.

That was in a rent pressure zone. The market has failed. It cannot provide this fundamental human right, so we see people left queuing for hours for house viewings, living from paycheck to paycheck and unable to save for the future.

I represent a constituency where 44% of properties are rented on the private market and so many people face insecurity and being given eviction notices. The primary cause of families entering homelessness is the landlord declaring an intent to sell the property, Focus Ireland tells us. During the pandemic we saw the impact an eviction ban can have in preventing people from entering homelessness. Because of that, we have called for a temporary extension of the ban through to the end of the year, not just for its own sake but also to give breathing space to the Government to bring forward policies and measures that will provide greater security to those who may well face eviction at the end of the ban. Avoiding a deluge of evictions means bringing in emergency measures of the sort we call for in our motion.

I have heard from many landlords in my constituency too. Many of them are what we might describe as accidental landlords who own just one property that they bought to equate to a pension for themselves. They feel under threat and unfairly scapegoated, but this is not in any way about castigating or criticising individual landlords. It is about years and years of Government policy that has led us to an overreliance by the State on private landlords, many of whom are small landlords, in order to fill a gap in State provision of social and affordable housing. This is therefore not in any way about critiquing individual landlords; it is about critiquing State policy that has created that overreliance on the market.

What are the constructive measures we propose? We want to see the tenant in situscheme ramped up. We want to see monthly reporting from each local authority on that scheme. We want to see the Residential Tenancies Board mandated to inform local authorities when a notice for eviction has been served in order that it can act to secure the home and to stop the tenant from entering homelessness. The idea of an extension of the eviction ban is to give the Government time to plan and to put in place measures to ensure that the tenant in situscheme will work better.

It is not just renters I hear from about this scheme. Last night I received an email from a small landlord in an urban area who wants to sell up and leave the rental market. The landlord has two tenants on the housing assistance payment. The person wants those tenants to remain in that home and has sought that the local authority would buy the home in order to keep the tenants in that home. This landlord is utterly frustrated because the local authority simply refuses to buy under the scheme. The landlord has contacted the office of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and other local public representatives. The landlord says that they are trying to do what is right and do not want to make their tenants homeless but that everyone seems utterly powerless to make a decision. It is a real failure if the tenant in situscheme does not work where landlord and tenant work together to try to make it work.

We call on the Government to do the right thing, to ramp up the tenant in situscheme and to adopt the other constructive measures we in Labour propose in this motion to ensure we see the introduction of an emergency public house-building programme on public land, to commence rapid compulsory purchase of vacant derelict properties and to endorse and rapidly progress Labour's Bills. We have put forward a Housing (Homeless Families) Bill, a renters' rights Bill and a Kenny report Bill. That legislation, taken together, would really help to address the housing crisis.

Lastly, we are disappointed that the Government, instead of taking on board these constructive measures, has put forward a countermotion or amendment to our motion. We regret that and ask the Government to consider withdrawing its countermotion, take on our constructive proposals for change and ensure we can work together to address this utter scourge, this most pressing social issue of our time.

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